The attraction of freethinking humanism

One rather surprising fact emerges from a history of humanism: most humanists were nice people. This might, on the surface, appear a totally fatuous observation. There is not much value in debating whether, say, architects, chancellors of the exchequer, engineers, surgeons or gardeners have been obviously nice people, and we would roll our eyes if a reviewer started speculating whether Wagner or Dickens were personally agreeable. But perhaps humanists are in a different category.

There is little doubt that those writers and thinkers of the past who placed humanity rather than divinity at the centre of their investigations and moral conclusions were consistently more decent, generous and kindly than their contemporaries. We think of Erasmus, with his detestation of cruelty and his advocacy of considerate manners; of Montaigne’s boundless bubbling curiosity; of Pico della Mirandola’s beautiful idea of man freely choosing, among possible qualities, ‘the free and extraordinary shaper of [him]self’; and of David Hume’s celebrated charm, married to an iron sense of principle. Hume’s exquisite likeability is summed up in his beautifully wry last words: ‘I am dying as fast as my enemies, if I have any, could wish, and as easily and cheerfully as my best friends could desire.’

These were, after all, people whose chosen field of study was morality, and whose conclusions shaped conspicuously agreeable people. Would it be possible to find a similar high standard of behaviour and amiability among another group of people devoted to ethical behaviour – theologians and the clergy? From Savonarola to Cardinal George Pell, I rather doubt it. Are we presented here with a choice between – as in Iris Murdoch’s title – The Nice and the Good? Perhaps niceness here is a reasonable standard of judgment on individual thinkers and writers.